


The Sighting

by phantasme



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-23
Updated: 2014-11-23
Packaged: 2018-02-26 16:46:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2659193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantasme/pseuds/phantasme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Who are you?” </p><p>The decaying warehouse, the symbols painted in red on the walls. The man standing at the far end of the long room. The light bulbs above Castiel’s head shattered one by one as he drew towards the man; he vaguely felt sparks blooming like flowers in the air around him, and bullets brushing lightly through the skin of his vessel. The man drew his knife. It flashed coldly in the dying light. </p><p>“I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition,” Castiel said. </p><p>Dean. Dean Winchester. Dean speaking, and Castiel answering. The sound waves met in the air, superimposing in a steep arc. Dean’s eyes were locked on Castiel’s. He had been waiting for this moment for centuries. Eons. </p><p>Longer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sighting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mlb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mlb/gifts).



> For Madeleine - happy belated Halloween. xx

  _I._ _  
_

Midnight. The highway coiled black and wet along the edge of the world. The earth was shifting silently, sliding into darkness, spinning away from the sun at a thousand miles an hour. The moon had been swallowed by shadows; the stars scratched out by the skeletal fingers of trees. The snakeskin strip of asphalt broke apart the forest, biting the trees’ bony embrace in two – the only certain landmark, though it twisted at treacherous angles and was slick with melted snow. The angel stood at a distance from the road, chin tilted up, charcoaled gray by the night. A car was coming – he felt, rather than heard, the vibration of the engine. He advanced a half step forward before pausing, and retreating further into the darkness.

The car’s headlights sliced through the blackness, casting long beams of light onto the highway and illuminating the narrow contours of the trees. He imagined them as two pale eyes, searching – for what? He knew what. He met their gaze, and his hands shook, just one slight tremor before he curled his fingers and felt the crescent-moon bite of blood on his palms. The headlights sliced through the blackness and sliced through his body, shattering him in splinters of light, cutting loose the shadows that had seeped into his skin. The night bled out of him in two tight slashes; he felt it break his back with the sound of crows’ wings. Crows’ wings, trailing over the rocks and the road as he walked in the wake of the car. Dragging behind him. Dragging him down.

The driver’s face had not been visible in the darkness.

Castiel knew what it looked like. He walked on towards the memory of the light.

 

* * *

 

 

“Who are you?”

The decaying warehouse, the symbols painted in red on the walls. The man standing at the far end of the long room. The light bulbs above Castiel’s head shattered one by one as he drew towards the man; he vaguely felt sparks blooming like flowers in the air around him, and bullets brushing lightly through the skin of his vessel. The man drew his knife. It flashed coldly in the dying light.

“I’m the one who gripped you tight and raised you from perdition,” Castiel said.

Dean. Dean Winchester. Dean speaking, and Castiel answering. The sound waves met in the air, superimposing in a steep arc. Dean’s eyes were locked on Castiel’s. He had been waiting for this moment for centuries. Eons. Longer.

“Yeah. Thanks for that.” And Dean plunged the knife into his chest.

He only vaguely felt the cold steel sliding against his heart, the tip of the blade teasing his arteries apart. Far more acute, to his senses, was the sudden warmth that infused the air near him as the human – all heated rage and pounding pulse – drew close, and then its absence when he dropped his hand from the knife and retreated. Castiel considered the situation. He glanced down absently at the knife and pulled it out; it clattered shrilly against the concrete, and scattered droplets of blood that glistened blackly in the half-light of the warehouse. Another piece of metal was whistling through the air by his head – Dean’s friend was here, too, he remembered, and turned to deflect the blow. He twisted the weapon effortlessly, swinging the other man towards him with blind and brutal strength, and touched two fingers to his forehead. Bobby Singer collapsed to the ground, unconscious, and Castiel tilted his head to survey his handiwork. He had underestimated how unprepared Dean Winchester was for this meeting.

He turned away from Bobby, and looked at Dean intently – certain of his role in this drama, but unsure if the other would play his designated part. “We need to talk, Dean. Alone.”

Dean was already moving to his friend’s side, his face contorted with anger, and did not respond. Castiel feigned interest in the spellbook the humans had used to summon him, turning the pages and studiously ignoring all else, until he finally sensed Dean glaring up at him. “Your friend’s alive,” he said casually, resisting the urge to meet Dean’s eyes.

Dean’s lip curled. “Who are you?”

“Castiel.”

“Yeah, I figured that much. I mean, _what_ are you?”

Castiel finally allowed himself to look up from the book. An alien tension was tugging at his nerves – he had never really felt dread before, but there was a sort of icy anticipation that coiled in his throat and made him hesitate a second too long before he said, “I’m an angel of the Lord.”

“Get the hell out of here.” Dean was on his feet in a flash, his disgust visible in every line of his body. “There’s no such thing.”

 He had expected it, at this point. He bit back his disappointment. “This is your problem, Dean. You have no faith.”

And it was just part of the script, really, the flash of lightning and the two black shadows feathering out from his shoulders, the stiffening of his spine and the hardening of his eyes as he tried to look like he truly believed in the omnipotence of a unknown deity. He raised his chin and saw that Dean had partly fallen for the act, and that he was rattled.

“Some angel you are,” he said heatedly. “You burned out that poor woman’s eyes!”

“I warned her not to spy on my true form. It can be... overwhelming to humans, and so can my real voice. But you already knew that.” He tilted his head slightly, wondering, as he had so frequently in recent days, what Dean had thought of their first communications.

“You mean the gas station and the motel. That was you talking?”

He nodded, slowly.

“Buddy, next time, lower the volume.”

“That was my mistake. Certain people, special people, can perceive my true visage. I thought you would be one of them.” He paused. “I was wrong.”

Dean was evidently unsatisfied. “And what _visage_ are you in now, huh? What, holy tax accountant?” He gestured, a little wildly, towards Castiel’s body. Castiel looked down at himself.

“This? This is…” What was the term? “… A vessel.”

Fury leapt in Dean’s eyes at that, and there was undisguised aggression in his tone – one wrong move, Castiel saw, and he would pick up the knife again. Not that it would make any difference. “You’re _possessing_ some poor bastard?”

“He’s a devout man,” he replied crisply. “He actually prayed for this.” He had no desire to waste his time on the petty semantics of the situation, and silently willed Dean to abandon his inhibitions so that they could get to the point of this exchange.

It didn’t quite work. “Well, I’m not buying what you’re selling, so who are you really?” Dean demanded, and Castiel repressed a sigh of irritation and impatience.

“I told you.”

“And why would an _angel_ rescue me from hell?”

He hadn’t quite expected that. “Good things do happen, Dean,” he began – but stopped himself before he could continue.

Dean made some kind of derisive noise – Castiel wasn’t sure it qualified as a laugh. “Not in my experience.” Eyebrows lifted, lip curled.

And this, this was too much. Castiel moved close to Dean, his throat tight – scorn, dismay, offended pride were choking him with alien heat – he was at the mercy of some terrifying, overwhelming, indefinable _need_ to make Dean understand what had transpired between them. Why they were meeting now, strangers sharing the same air, pupils wide in the same darkness. Why Castiel’s handprint was crimson on Dean’s arm. His mouth was a thin line. His face a mask. “What’s the matter? You don’t think you deserve to be saved?”

Dean did not back down from the challenge. His chin was raised, his back straight, and Castiel saw that he had not managed to sway him from his private convictions regarding the nature of God and man. “Why’d you do it?”

The only answer he could give was the only one he didn’t want to.

“Because God commanded it. Because we have work for you.”

 

* * *

 

Once upon a time, he had lost everything. 

He had sat alone in the hospital room, fragile in a white smock, and abandoned himself to an exquisite pain that pulsed through him like lightning, endlessly, endlessly. It was no less, he whispered to himself – perhaps, whispered aloud, for he found that he was no longer wholly able to regulate his faculties – no less than he deserved. It was penance, almost – a salutary measure, saltwater in the wound. Stitches, in a sense. He swore to the hallucination smiling at him from the corner of the room that he was going to piece back together the corrupted shards of his self, and atone for all his sins.

“Stitches leave scars,” the hallucination said. “You’re screwed, brother.” He cracked his knuckles and laughed.

“I’m so sorry, Sam. I deserved to die. Now I can’t possibly fix it. Why did I even walk out of that river?” He was babbling, parroting the last sane words he had spoken. “Don’t defend me. Do you have any idea the death toll in Heaven? On Earth?” A pause. He covered his face with his hands, rejecting the vision of horror he himself had constructed. “I remember everything.”

Betrayal, blind ambition. He had broken so much. Sam. Dean – Dean, with his intense green-eyed stare, insisting that _you did the best you could at the time_ and _we didn’t part friends – but so what?_ , so loyal and so wrong in his wild belief that Castiel could still make amends and that they could return to what they had once been.

But now Castiel was broken, too, and there was nothing left but to shut his eyes and let the nightmare swallow him whole.

 

* * *

 

 

It was not until much later that he was able to open his eyes again, and fill his lungs with clean air and believe that he had contained the worst of the pain. Saltwater drained, stitches healed. There was a lopsided quality to his thoughts – a strange slant that he couldn’t correct – but, on the hallucination’s advice, he had determined to accept the scars as a part of his punishment. A mark of his untrustworthiness, so that he would never be persuaded to commit those familiar errors again.

Dean noticed, of course, and remarked upon it. “It's Sam's thing, isn't it? You taking on his, uh, cage-match scars. I'm guessing that's what broke your bank, right?” Castiel’s hands were folded atop the clean dayroom table. Several floors above, he could hear Sam and Meg arguing, and struggled to shut out the sound.

“Well, it took… everything to get me here,” he said.

“What are you talking about, man?” How he had missed that constant edge of anger, that strident determination to understand, to reason, to do the right thing. Vigilante justice executed by two rough and eager hands – but justice all the same. He wished he could hold those hands, and stop them from delivering the same tired assertion that somehow _he_ , the angel Castiel, was the right thing.

He wished he could press them to his scars, and let Dean’s fingers wander over their length and depth, examine each of the cuts into his conscience – the obvious evidence of all his failures – for though Dean observed them, commented on them, it was apparent that he refused to see them for what they really were. He tried to explain Dean’s mistake to him: “I know you want different answers.”

“No, I want you to button up your coat and help us take down Leviathans. Do you remember what you did?”

But that wasn’t the point, that had never been the point – and he could not make Dean understand. He said nothing, and instead took one of the board games off the table, and held it up for Dean to read. _Sorry!_

Keeping his eyes fixed on Dean, waiting for comprehension to finally flash across his expression and for all the confusion to settle into silence, he shook the box. The thin piece of cardboard lay smooth and flat on the table between them, the little pegs glistening beneath the electric lights. “Do you want to go first?”

For a time they said nothing, as Dean waited for Castiel’s explanations and Castiel struggled to form them. Finally, he began: “You know, we weren't sure at first which monkeys were gonna make it. No offense, but I was backing the Neanderthals because their poetry was... just amazing. It's in perfect tune with the spheres. But in the end, it was you – the _homo sapiens sapiens_. You guys ate the apple, invented pants.” He noticed, not entirely with pleasure, that Dean was badly losing the game.

“Cas, where can we find this, uh, Metatron? Is he still alive?”

He ignored the question, still concentrating on correcting Dean’s misconceptions. “I'm sorry. I – I think you have to go back to start.”

Dean complied, but his impatience was clearly visible in the thin line of his mouth, in the set of his shoulders. “This is important.” Castiel motioned for him to pick up another card. “I think Metatron could stop a lot of bad. You understand that?”

His turn. He took a card, and considered it carefully. “We live in a ‘sorry’ universe. It's engineered to create conflict. I mean, why should I prosper from... your misfortune?” As if in illustration, he moved one of his pieces forward, and delicately placed one of Dean’s back at the start. “But these are the rules. I didn't make them.” He looked up at Dean, desperately hoping that at last he would understand, that he would recognize that the damage he had done went so much deeper than the buildings burned and the lives lost – that his betrayal was unforgiveable, because it was ongoing.

“You made some of them. When you tried to become God, when you cut that hole into that wall,” Dean argued, and Castiel saw with a sinking heart that he had once more failed to grasp his meaning.

“Dean... it's your move,” he said quietly.

And Dean’s fist came down on the table. The plastic pieces vibrated and toppled and trembled like hail upon the floor as he swept the board away. “Forget the damn game! Forget the game, Cas!”

He stared at the wreckage of the board game. His hands curled up on the table, outstretched and empty. “I’m sorry, Dean.”

“No,” Dean said. “You’re _playing_ sorry.” – And Castiel saw that Dean would not see, would not understand, would not _accept_ that Castiel could not be trusted to fight for him again – that he had never fought for him at all.

 

* * *

* * *

* * *

  
_II._

 

“No, for the last damn time, Bobby, I don’t _know_. No. What? Yeah, I can check.”

It was autumn, and dry leaves scuttled across the motel parking lot, occasionally pausing in the gutter before tumbling up onto the raised pavement just outside the room. One crunched noisily beneath Dean’s shoe as he paced the perimeter of the building. The moon was already rising, a soft luminous crescent against an orange sky soft with recent rain, and the wind was picking up in the promise of nighttime. The phone signal wasn’t strong – Bobby’s voice faded in and out in between little fits of static, and Dean had to ask him to repeat himself every now and then.

“No – he just stumbled into the room, drenched in rain, no blood, knife wasn’t even in his hand – what? No, I don’t even know if he has it. He just said ‘angels’ and freakin’ collapsed. And he shut his eyes. But far as I could tell, he doesn’t have any physical injuries.” He glanced towards the door of the motel room and bit his lip. “All I can figure is they hit him in the head or something. Or he’s had some kind of psychological breakdown. Wouldn’t be the first time – but – what? Oh. Yeah, that’s what I was about to say – he’s supposed to be better now.”

He walked slowly towards the end of the long, low row of motel rooms, his free hand buried in his pocket, his expression attentive as he listened to the voice on the other end of the line. “No, Sam took the car into town to work on our case. I already called him, but there’s not a whole lot we can do if we don’t know what’s wrong. What? – Yeah, that’s the idea. Any info you can find on angels suddenly transforming into Sleeping Beauty. Let me know as soon as you find anything. What? Yeah, I’m keeping an eye out for them, don’t worry. I already put up the sigils in case they come back for him or somethin’. Yeah. Thanks, Bobby. Bye.” He hung up, still staring pensively towards some distant unknown – then, eventually, turned back towards the room. The leaves rustled loudly as he closed the door on them, and on the orange slice of moon leering down at him.

Inside, Castiel lay limp on the bed nearest the door, one arm and most of his coat dangling over the side. Dean studied him from his position by the doorway, at first with scientific scrutiny, and then with a different, softer sort of interest. He had never seen Castiel asleep before - if asleep he truly was. He imagined that he could see a white sliver of each eye, twin crescent moons glimmering beneath his eyelids. One finger crooked slightly as the door creaked shut. Dean advanced a half step forward, as though the angel’s unconscious gesture had been a summons, and waited for him to stir and blink and look away. But except for the steady drip of rainwater from a corner of Castiel’s coat to the floor, there was no further movement.

He lingered at the bedside for a moment, contemplating Castiel’s features – the lines of exhaustion and care etched into his skin, the naked anxiety of his unguarded expression. It was impossible not to wonder what thoughts were weighing so heavily behind those shut eyelids, that peace did not come to Castiel even in utter unconsciousness – and suddenly, a question, an idea, crept into the back of Dean’s mind. He let it hover there for a few minutes, a strange and shimmering unlikelihood, as though it was a soap bubble that would pop as soon as he touched it.

The idea pressed more insistently at him. He allowed himself to consider it. It did not pop, and he backed away slowly from Castiel’s side.

He searched his bag for the drug that he had once used to access Sam and Bobby’s dreams, keeping one eye on Castiel as he sorted through black t-shirts and boxes of ammunition. His fingers brushed against worn plastic, and he pulled out the Ziploc bag of African dream root. The zipper had faded to a pale pink with age and use. He broke off a piece of root and tossed the bag aside.

Cinnamon. Ginger. Sugar from packets taken from a restaurant in Sioux City. Cutting off a piece of Castiel’s hair was easy – the angel never moved, never altered his breathing. Dean paused to study his face, wondering if Castiel’s injuries went deeper than he could see. If they did, there was nothing he could do about it; all he could do was wait for Bobby to call back. Or – he glanced down at the lock of hair caught between his fingers – he could ask Castiel himself what was wrong. It was a purer motive for what he was about to do than mere prying curiosity.

He crossed the room, filled one of the Styrofoam coffee cups provided by the motel with tap water. Stirred in the smashed remains of the root, the dark strand of hair. The mixture was a dirty yellow against the white of the cup. He pinched his nose and drank it in two large swallows, crumpled the wet Styrofoam in his fist, and dropped heavily onto the bed next to Castiel.

Dean closed his eyes, and opened them again to darkness.

 

* * *

 

It was different than what he had expected. Bright-white corridors, sterile and sharp-edged like those in a hospital. But standing at the head of the hall, Dean felt himself enclosed within the bleached skeleton of some great beast, with black doorways standing out like slits in a ribcage and running on into darkness. Castiel was nowhere in sight.

The temptation to call out and break the unnatural silence itched in the back of his mind, growing into an almost physical need. To distract himself, he moved towards the nearest door, noting that his footsteps made no sound and that his shadow, in spite of the bright light, was a long and dirty smudge on the white floor.

He held his breath and stepped through the door, into blackness.

“We need to talk.”

He blinked, and the blackness was gone. A breeze brushed lightly against his face; it smelled of summer, and the slight tang of lake water. A wooden pier stretched before him, and at the end stood Castiel.

“Cas,” he said urgently, the hollow slap of his shoes against the boards echoing uneasily as he moved forward. But Castiel did not turn around, and Dean stopped abruptly when he saw what the angel was looking at. His own body, seated at the end of the pier, a fishing pole resting in his hand. Legs stretched out, heels digging into the wood. Face tilted up to look at Castiel. This was familiar. He _remembered_ this.

“I’m dreaming, aren’t I?” he heard himself say. He cast about frantically with his mind, seeking to feel the weight of the fishing pole in his palm, the twist of his neck as he looked up at Castiel. But he remained separate from his body, a stranger in his own memory.

“It’s not safe here. Someplace more private.”

“More private? We’re inside my head.”

He could not feel himself inside his own skin, but he could sense Castiel’s distress – a frenzied anxiety that crawled along his nerves like a spider. Something was wrong – something had been thrown off balance and broken. And this, then, was where he hoped to fix it?

“Exactly. Someone could be listening.” At the time, Dean had not understood the comment, had wanted to raise his eyebrows at it. Now he thought about laughing – someone _was_ listening. _He_ was listening.

“Cas, what’s wrong?”

“Meet me here,” Castiel said, and held out a pale strip of paper. Dean remembered the confusion he had felt as he had taken it, remembered the questions that had burned on his tongue as Castiel stared down at him – but now, for the first time, he felt the fear behind the angel’s unreadable eyes. Felt the darkness and the doubt as they wound around the edges of the memory, hiding in the folds of Castiel’s coat, taking root someplace Dean could not reach. “Go now.”

And he felt the hope that Castiel dared not dwell on, the silent prayer that crouched in the corners of his mind and tightened in his throat as he watched Dean read the paper. He wanted to stay with Dean. But there was nothing to hold onto, nothing to justify his faith in this half-stranger of a human being – and both the Dean at the end of the pier and the Dean hanging back in the shadows blinked, and Castiel was gone.

Dean watched himself twist around in his chair, looking for Castiel, and knew that the memory had ended. He turned away, preparing to go back into the white-lit corridor and try another door, and to his surprise found a doorway already waiting for him. Another black rectangle stitched into the fabric of the landscape, a gaping slice of shadow gleaming like a cat’s pupil. He tentatively touched the edge, but did not waste more time than that wondering how a door could exist without a wall. This was Castiel’s mind – the walls were there, whether he could see them or not. The doors were the important thing.

He stepped forward.

 

* * *

 

The cold hit him first. It bit at his face, at his uncovered hands, and gnawed at the fabric of his clothing, but he had faced worse and turned up the collar of his jacket without blinking. There were trees – black against a cloudy violet sky, and their branches were laden with snow. Ice crystals snapped beneath his shoes as he stepped forward. There was a road, and a gently sloping hill, framed by another thin avenue of trees. Beyond, the silver lights of a city sparkled just a little brighter than the stars, the silhouettes of the buildings scarcely visible in the twilight. His breath was white in the frozen air. Everything was silent.

What _was_ this?

He kept walking forward, the snow collecting on the tips of his shoes and dampening the edges of his jeans, until he reached the road. A glance to the right – the road wound down into the valley, towards the city. To the left – and his heart stopped, just for an instant, before leaping into his throat and pounding its drumbeat into his brain. His own car was parked about a hundred feet away, quiet and black and shiny with melted snow, and his own body was resting on the hood, one knee up, the other leg dangling over the grille. His head was cradled by a tan trenchcoat, and Castiel was looking down at him, one hand brushing against his cheek. As Dean watched, his other self reached up and clasped Castiel’s other hand in his own.

He swallowed. Was this Castiel’s dream, or his?  

There was nothing he could do but walk forward.

“Damn, Cas, you’ve got a really fast heart rate for someone who’s been sitting still for, like, thirty fricking minutes,” his other self said, a grin flashing across his features and one finger skimming against Castiel’s wrist, and the angel looked down thoughtfully at their joined hands. 

“Technically, we’ve only been sitting still for sixteen minutes and forty-nine seconds.”

“Really?” Dean was close enough now that he could see the glint in his other self’s eyes. “Maybe it’s time to move around a little, then, don’tcha think? Raise your pulse a little more, even?”

It took Castiel a moment to work through the question, his eyebrows knotting together as he stared down at Dean. “Is that a suggestion that we should have sex now?”

It took his other self a moment longer. “… Yeah, I guess it is.” Having decided on the idea, his grin widened and he shifted a little, moving closer to Castiel.

Dean stopped a few yards short of the pair, his lips still slightly parted with shock. It was one thing to _think_ it, to briefly picture it in the swift dark corners of his mind, and turn it over once or twice in the moment before he fell asleep – to know on a purely intellectual level that Castiel had gone to hell and fallen from heaven and fought a war for him, and that he would do the same without question or hesitation. It was one thing to notice when Castiel’s eyes lingered on him a second too long or to feel his pulse accelerating –  just the smallest degree – when he glanced up and saw Castiel waiting for him. It was another thing entirely to see it manifested as a fully formed, almost tangible idea, with color and noise and wind stinging his skin and heat rushing through his veins. It was strange, and it hurt, and he had no idea how he was supposed to react to it. 

It had begun to snow. Little flakes of ice gathered in Dean’s hair and on his shoulders, and smoothed over the blanket of white that had already been draped across the landscape. On the hood of the Impala, the other Dean struggled into a sitting position, his eyes alive with excitement.

“Hey, Cas, let’s have a snowball fight.”

“We already did that,” the angel complained. “You shoved the snow into my pants.”

“I helped ya melt it, though, didn’t I?” Dean’s other self slid off the car, keeping his hand locked around Castiel’s and using the contact to tug him forward. 

“Can’t we go ahead and have sex?” 

“We’ll still do that, too. C’mere,” the other Dean said coaxingly, and Castiel inched forward, his lips pressed together petulantly. As soon as he was on his feet, Dean threw an arm around his wait, whirled him around, and toppled them both to the ground with a shout of “SNOW ANGEL!”

“ _What_ ,” came Castiel’s voice from underneath the other Dean’s body. His arms were spread out awkwardly, his trenchcoat fanned out across the snow like wings. Dean’s mouth twitched in a ghost of a grin, and the other Dean snickered aloud. 

“You’re my snow angel, Cas! Geddit?” He pushed himself up a few inches, smirking down at Castiel. The angel blinked back at him, his tone flat and uncompromising.

“No.”

“Because, like, we’re in the snow, and you’re an angel, and… Okay, never mind.” There was a moment of silence. Dean counted his erratic heartbeats and tried to breathe, but the cold air seemed to have frozen his lungs. In the snow, the other Dean tilted his face forward an inch, hesitated, then slowly leaned in to kiss away the snowflakes that had caught in Castiel’s eyelashes. Castiel carefully lifted his hands to Dean’s waist, pressing his thumbs to the inside of his hipbones, and both Deans inhaled sharply. The other Dean’s mouth traveled down to meet Castiel’s, and his movements were deliberate and graceful and tender in a way that Dean had not known he was capable of.

Or perhaps he had known.

Perhaps he had known all along. There was an overwhelming familiarity about the scene – not simply because he knew his own body and knew his own mind and knew exactly how he would position his mouth on another’s, but because it felt as though he had lived it. It was as though he was calling an oft-repeated and oft-forgotten dream out of the depths of his subconscious, or remembering something that hadn’t yet happened. Déjà vu was twisting in his every synapse, burning in every cell. His ears were ringing – a high-pitched noise vibrating against his eardrums – Castiel was calling to him.

The pair by the car had gotten to their feet again. The other Dean dragged Castiel towards the backseat of the Impala by the lapels of his coat, but Castiel was a step ahead of him; a twist of his hand and the car door was open. Another twist, and the other Dean was flat on his back in the bench seat. Through the windshield, Dean could see his grin as he propped himself up on one elbow.

Castiel vanished from sight.

The smile slipped abruptly from the other Dean’s expression, his face displaying all of the shock that the Dean in the background felt. A punch to the gut – and the next second, Castiel reappeared, inside the car, astride the other Dean, a triumphant smirk curling his mouth as Dean seized him by the collar again and pulled him down. The car door slammed shut. The noise broke through the silence of the snow and the ringing of Dean’s ears like a gunshot.

To stay, at that point, would have been unnerving and inappropriate on a number of different levels. Ordinarily, he might have been tempted nonetheless, but there was something about the scene that had him turning away with lowered eyes and fists in his pockets. Not embarrassment, or disgust, or any emotion that he could ascribe a name to – except perhaps a sort of _sadness_ that welled up from somewhere deeply buried, from some hidden place just behind his heart. A dark-blue melancholy that left a bitter taste on his tongue, and splintered his nerves and coiled around his muscles and pulled him irrevocably towards the door that swung ajar a few feet away. It was not the door he had come through, he noted dully, but it was another black rectangle, standing out with unnatural sharpness amidst the snow and sky. Another black mouth that swallowed him up the instant he stepped through, and there was no looking back.

 

* * *

 

“Morning, sunshine.”

It took Dean’s eyes a moment to adjust to the hazy half-light of the new scene opening before him. There was a slim wedge of honey-colored sun slanting in through a window, and he saw first the floorboards, warped and warm – then the rumpled sheets, the comforter half-fallen to the floor. Folds softer than the motel-room linens he was so accustomed to, and he caught the faint scent of some sweet detergent, some long-forgotten smell of cleanliness and security. The sound of own voice, thick with sleep, washed through the room – filling it up with _morning, sunshine_ , and the rustle of the bed as his other self stretched free of the sheets. His hair was golden in the light, and his face somewhat more lined, Dean realized, than it was at present. This, then, was a manifestation of a future even more distant and strange than that which he had just witnessed in the winter forest. He drew closer, fascinated in spite of himself.

“It’s twelve-fourteen, so it’s no longer morning, actually.” He had expected, at this point, to hear Castiel’s voice emanating from beneath the heavy muffle of pillows and blankets, but the familiar crisp pronunciation, the syllables spinning off into the air like gold dust, still provided a profound shock to his system. His other self rolled over, reaching for the watch on the bedside table and exposing the bare skin of his torso.

“Smart-ass.”

“I’m simply stating the facts of the matter.”

The other Dean flipped himself back over, propping himself up on one elbow and looking down at the fluffy pile of pillows that hid Castiel from view. The undisguised tenderness of his gaze was, in some ways, more disconcerting than anything that had been said or done up to this point – the only thing that could never be explained away with a joke and a cold shrug of the shoulders – _me and Cas – we’re just friends – just having some fun –_ the only thing that could not be forgotten. The light touch with which the other Dean lifted the pillow off Castiel’s face, the gentle dip of his head as he leaned down to kiss him, the warm glow that wrapped the whole romantic image – illusions though they might be, glimmering in this curious corner of the real Castiel’s mind, they had their source in something real. They had been coaxed out of some genuine emotion that belonged to both of them. He had known it was there, he supposed – that intangible something slinking behind his thoughts – but now he felt it well up in his chest and tighten his throat. He stared at the pair tangled on the bed, and the feeling naked in his other self’s expression, and felt it consume him entirely.

“I’m – very fond of you, Dean.” Castiel’s eyes were closed, the confession almost inaudible as he drew his arm around the other Dean’s neck. Rested his forehead against his shoulder.

The other Dean’s hand pressed against Castiel’s back, fingers splayed. “Yeah.” Silence, for a minute. “You got me, man. Ride or die.”

“Ride or die.” He didn’t realize, at first, that he had echoed his other self. He clenched his fists. The room darkened slightly. A cloud was passing over the sun, he supposed, and shut his eyes. When he opened them again, the other Dean and Castiel had disappeared beneath the blankets, and the edges of the room were fading in a gloomy blur. Dean started slightly, glancing over his shoulder as though attempting to pinpoint the source of the creeping blackness, then stiffened as the shadows abruptly enveloped the scene. It was as though someone had pressed two fingers to his eyelids and forced him into blackness, into a nighttime world so still and cold that it was difficult even to draw oxygen from the opaque air. He held his breath, then, and waited. 

From somewhere to his left, a slight rustle. A few minutes passed. Then - 

“Hello, Dean.” 

“Hey, Cas. Mind turning the lights back on?”

“Yes.” The sound of footsteps. Three paces towards him. Even in the darkness, he could picture how the angel looked - fists thrust deep into his pockets, the skin of his neck stretched tight as he stared up at Dean. His expression an icy blank.

“No, my hands are not in my pockets, Dean.”

He shifted uncomfortably. Castiel’s voice was closer than he had calculated, almost a hiss in his ear. “Stay out of my head.”

“Why should I?” The sound of footsteps rang out again, spinning and spilling across the blackness. He could hear the anger in Castiel’s movements, in his words - anger like a tightly coiled spring snapping loose, anger trembling in midair as he stopped before Dean - he could feel him, inches away, his breath sharp and quick and cold on Dean’s skin - the shadows were crackling and stuttering with static. “You didn’t extend the same courtesy to me.”

Dean resisted the urge to take a step back. “I was curious.” He paused, another thought curling on the tip of his tongue - he decided to risk it. “This doesn’t feel much like a dream world, though.”

“Doesn’t it?” The rhetorical question was mocking, the angel’s tone acidic. “Of course it’s not a dream world. I’m an angel. I don’t dream. Technically, I don’t even need to _sleep_. You are walking around in nothing less than a small corner of my conscious mind. Welcome to my head, Dean; I hope you enjoy your stay.”

And at his words, the light flooded back - the same icy, sterile brilliance of the corridor beyond, a sudden whiteness that left Dean stumbling and blinking. Castiel’s figure was carved around twin sparks of fury, two blue eyes bitter with some nameless emotion. He spun around before Dean had time to adjust to the sudden change in light, his tan coat flying behind with the force and speed of his stride, his shadow spreading across the widening gap between him and Dean. He turned around so that he was walking backwards, his face towards Dean, and flung his arms out. In front of him his shadow mirrored the motion: Two black wings broke free of his body, blooming across the whiteness like bloodstains, crucifying Dean on the long cross of his silhouette. 

“Of course it’s not a dream world,” he repeated. “Look at this!” On either side of his figure, as though blossoming from his outstretched hands, the two scenes Dean had last witnessed sprang up once more, filling the space beyond where Castiel stood. “You think these are the simple product of an idle imagination? The random gibberish of the sleeping subconscious? You’re looking at the _future_ , Dean, at possibilities, at things to come and things that will never be.”

“Things that will never be,” Dean echoed. 

Castiel’s face was hard. “Never.”

Dean took a step forward, straightening his spine and parting his lips in his accustomed expression of defiant incredulity. “Well, why the hell not?”

“Because everything you just saw –“ Castiel clamped his mouth shut. Opened it again. “Let me put it this way. Right now, you and me, we’re inside my head. But where are we, really? I’m slumped over in a partly decaying chair, unconscious and wounded. You’re asleep on a bed in a state of disrepair similar to the chair. We’re in a motel. What’s the name of the motel, Dean? What’s the name of the town?” He dropped his hands, and the two visions that had sprung from his open palms flickered out of existence. A stain of shadow was spreading throughout the whiteness, swirling outward from the place where the twin images had hung and reducing the world to trembling gray. Castiel’s hands were buried deeply in his pockets now, Dean noticed with a vague and humorless sense of irony that faded almost immediately. It was replaced by an icy unease that permeated the marrow of his very bones, and imparted an edge of reluctance to his voice as he answered Castiel.

“The town’s Lennox, South Dakota. I don’t know the name of the motel. But – “

Castiel cut him off. “The point is that even though we’re here, we’re not _really_ here. All the things you just witnessed are not happening in reality.” Castiel touched his temple firmly. “They’re only happening in my head.”

Dean gradually became aware that he was shaking his head. “It doesn’t have to be that way. You said they were possibilities – things to come – “

“Do you love me, Dean?”

The question took him off guard, and he tensed slightly under the pressure of Castiel’s searching gaze. The darkness was pooling around his feet now. “Yeah,” he said at length, his mouth dry and fingers involuntarily curling into fists. “Yeah, I love you, Cas. And – and you?”

“Of course,” he said simply, without hesitation. “I’ve always loved you.” Dean dimly realized that his fists had unclenched at the words, that the tightly coiled muscle of his heart had unknotted and was pounding furiously. A liquid heat was coursing through his veins, electrifying him, dizzying him, and he could not make sense of it, and he could not let go of it, and he had never wanted anything so much in his life.  

“But it’s not enough,” Castiel said, and Dean stared at him uncomprehendingly, his hands slack at his sides and the heat ebbing from his body to be replaced once again with bruising cold.

“What?”

“Your love for me and my love for you doesn’t alter the facts, Dean. It never has. It never will.” He paced a few steps away, turned around, walked back. “I don’t pretend to know much of love, or of God’s plan. Allegedly the two are the same – the Word of God is the love story of God and the world. And if I were to search that Word, if I were to go all the way back to Genesis and the birth of the human soul, I like to think that I would see that Dean Winchester had been created for me, Castiel – and that the hand of God had crafted this imperfect, this most broken and confused and corrupted of angels, specifically to raise an imperfect and broken and confused and corrupted man from the depths of hell. To raise him from his private darkness, and to walk forward into the light with him.”

“We can’t do it alone,” Dean said quietly. The dull, frozen ache had settled heavily on his chest, reaching up into his throat and choking him before he could continue speaking.

“We can’t,” the angel agreed. “But such love stories don’t exist. Not for you and me. Not for anyone. God gave us free will instead of beauty and perfection and love – damnable bastard that he is – and it’s turned out to be the source of all of our troubles, ironically enough. There’s no Scripture that says Dean Winchester and the angel Castiel will be united as one and lifted up to any small level of Paradise and live happily ever after as the lovers they were meant to be. There’s only Scripture that says God gave us the freedom to choose evil, and we did – all of us, man, woman, and angel alike. The concept of fate isn’t relevant here.” He took his hands out of his pockets, looked down at them for a moment, and then replaced them. The darkness around Dean’s feet was beginning to crawl upwards, into the space between Castiel and Dean. Castiel appeared not to notice, and glanced back up at Dean with troubled eyes. “There was a particular religious doctrine that gained traction in the late seventeenth century that regarded God as a watchmaker. God was said to have created the clock of the universe, wound it, and left it to run on its own while he sauntered off into oblivion. But Dean, I’m telling you, he didn’t even wind the watch. He left it in pieces, and we’re left to figure out how they fit together.”

“So what you’re saying is that you and I don’t fit.”

Castiel reached across the emptiness between them, his arm extended just above the thin barrier of shadow. Dean caught Castiel’s hand in his, turned it over slowly, pressed their palms together. His fingers were a fraction longer than Castiel’s. They both watched in silence as their fingers twined together as if by their own accord. Eventually Castiel spoke again, his voice slicing sharply through the darkening space.

“The watch won’t tick with you and I standing side-by-side.” He tightened his grip on Dean’s hand, his thumb brushing against Dean’s. “Everything I showed you – the future, I called it – it’s only inevitable in here, in my mind, in yours. Only in the holes of the reality I just described to you – in the private delusions where we pretend fate is real, so that we won’t have to acknowledge the discomfiting truth that the universe is dominated by chaos. But out there, in that motel, in Lennox, South Dakota, there is no inevitability. There’s only choice. And you and I will never choose each other.”

Dean moved forward swiftly, boldly disregarding the wall of darkness that now spread up past their joined hands. “That’s bullshit. We’ve come this far, we can keep going. Fuck your half-assed ideas about inevitability and God and freedom and whatever else! It doesn’t _matter_ , man, you can’t think that I wouldn’t choose you!”

“You haven’t,” Castiel snapped. “You never have and you never will. And you never _should_. Dean, you stopped the apocalypse. You’ve prevented the rise of monsters that could have destroyed the established order with a twitch. You’ve saved the world a hundred thousand times, a hundred thousand ways – and none of it is thanks to me. More often than not, I help create the damage, and you get hit in the fallout. You can’t solve the universe’s problems with me beside you – and the universe needs you.” He cleared his throat, and when he spoke again, the vitriol had vanished from his voice. It was replaced by an cold professionalism that crystallized his expression and uncurled his hand from Dean’s. “As an old business partner once advised me, this is not how synergy works.”

“You’re leaving me for the sake of – synergy.” Dean stared at the emptiness that had suddenly sprung between them. The shadows thickened. He reached out hesitantly, as though seeking to reclaim Castiel’s hand, but Castiel pulled away – just a centimeter – and his arm dropped back to his side.

“I’m not leaving you, Dean,” Castiel said. His mouth twisted, evidently in an effort to maintain his icy demeanor, but Dean heard the tenderness behind the words, heard his breath catch in his throat as he forced out the damning sentence. “I was never with you.”

And he was gone, and Dean was alone.

 

* * *

* * *

* * *

 

_III._

Eventually, he would jerk awake, startled back into his own brain by the sound of the motel room door opening. Sam would be standing with his hand on the doorknob, a question forming on his lips, and Dean would ignore him – a sharp gasp straining his lungs, frantic hands grasping at the damp blanket that still smelled of Castiel. “Where is he?” He would not give his brother a chance to answer, but would stagger to his feet, furiously blinking the blackness out of his eyes as the blood rushed back through his body. “ _Where is he?”_ Tearing apart the room, as though Castiel might be crouching behind the curtains, or hiding behind the Bible in the bedside table drawer. He would throw the Bible at the wall – _there’s no Scripture that says Dean Winchester and the angel Castiel will live happily ever after as the lovers they were meant to be, there’s no place for us in the Word of God, I don’t make the rules, Dean, I don’t make the rules_ – he would yell God damn, damn God and rip out Genesis, the fragile white pages torn apart and fluttering to the ground like snow.

“I have to find him. I’m going to find him.” He would swear by every god and demon he knew. He would bruise his fist against the wall, his knuckles leaving a bloody streak on the plaster, and wrench the doorknob off in his haste to get outside. The moon would be tilted towards the west, its rosy curve long since bleached into a skeleton fragment – more of a grimace than a grin – and he would recoil at the bleak phantasmagoria of the night – at the swirling, trembling blackness that enveloped him so eagerly, so familiarly, so like the nightmare that had swallowed him whole. “Cas!” he would scream, and scream again when no response came, when no angel returned to answer his prayers and raise him from his private hell, when Castiel proved one last time that they had never really chosen each other, after all.

And Dean would stumble on through the shadows, searching desperately for his keys, slamming the car door – the next second tearing apart the highway at ninety miles an hour, the asphalt black and wet, the pine trees swaying dangerously. He would swear again that Castiel was wrong. That he loved him, and that he would construct a different kind of choice, a new set of rules, a doctrine that would declare them once and for all inevitable. That he would find Castiel and bring him home.

And he would keep driving – on and on – until the night ended, and the darkness was far behind.


End file.
